by Fiona Mozley
During these disputes, Elton defended Agatha’s interest, acting alongside Roster and her mother to make sure the trust was protected. He derived a large part of his income from this work and guessed correctly that if he ingratiated himself with the child and her mother, he could stand to gain much more.
The rhythms and routines of Agatha’s life are directed by that last will. The document is her blueprint, her star chart, her DNA. Its contents laid out for her a life radically removed from anything her ancestors knew. It informed her geography and her geology. Wealth does not simply determine the external: the life the document set out for Agatha built her from the inside out. The opulence she was to inherit nourished her from the day she was born until the day she claimed it.
Agatha spends much of her time contemplating that piece of paper and its hold on her. Had it not been written, her mother might not have kept her in the country, or kept her at all. She might have stuck a pin in her before she was born, or left her on the doorstep of an Orthodox church.
Agatha wonders if they would have returned to Russia. It’s unlikely: Anastasia has never shown any interest in going back, even to visit, but what else would she have done? Agatha has met friends of her mother’s who’ve not been so fortunate. They likewise attached themselves to rich men but didn’t manage to stick around. Women like her mother but not her mother tended to wash up in brothels in dark houses on council estates. Their children too were forced to grow up far too young. If it wasn’t for that piece of paper she might have been thrown into a life of poverty, alcohol and narcotics.
Roster stops the car outside the front entrance of the club and gets out of the driver’s seat to open the door for Agatha. Fedor is with her. When she steps onto the street he shows no signs of wanting to follow, but remains sprawled across the comfortable back seat, tucked up in a blanket.
“I’ll park the car and take the boy out for another run,” says Roster.
“If he lets you,” replies Agatha. “He’ll want to sleep.”
“We’ll see.”
Agatha pushes through the heavy doors into the foyer. She’s met by a porter who looks at her trousers and opens his mouth as if wanting to say something about them. Female guests are required to wear skirts. He hesitates. Most of the staff in the club are from Eastern Europe and are likely to speak a little Russian as well as English. She says to him in Russian: “Does it matter?”
He looks up at her, startled by the choice of language, and replies, also in Russian. “Not to me, but if we don’t at least try to enforce the rules, we suffer for it.”
“I’m not going home to change my clothes,” she says in Russian. “So you’ll have to suffer.”
The porter’s face begins to redden. He looks down at his clipboard but does nothing to counter her barb. In English, he asks for the name of her host.
“Tobias Elton. He’ll be in the Trafalgar Room.”
Each time Agatha comes to this club, she is struck by its shabbiness. It fills a townhouse on one of the most expensive squares in the capital, but its interior is decrepit. The aesthetic is so pronounced, it must be deliberate. Expensive carpets are worn thin and antique furniture is scuffed, because what does it matter to these men, presumably? Renovation is a bourgeois concern.
The porter opens the door of the Trafalgar Room and stands back so Agatha can go in, then closes the door behind her. On the walls, there are portraits of British men who may once have been notable but have since been forgotten. Tobias is sitting in a deep leather armchair by one of the tall bay windows. As Agatha approaches, he doesn’t get up, she notes. He does, however, pour milk into a cup followed by tea from a silver pot, then slides it in her direction. She sits down opposite him and crosses her arms and legs.
In recent weeks, there have only been two topics to discuss: the evictions in Soho, and Agatha’s sisters. Agatha gets on well with her eldest sister, Valerie, who was born when her father was a teenager, is now elderly, and still lives in the village in which she grew up. The next three, Chelsea, Angel and Victoria, are an active and continuous nuisance. Not one of them seems to have anything to do outside harassing her, and they are still making claims on her money.
When Agatha was a child, her sisters tried to have their father’s will overturned on the grounds of diminished capacity, but the argument didn’t stick. It was possible he wasn’t in his right mind when he had the will drawn up but, then again, he may never have been in his right mind. Not having met the man, Agatha’s understanding of his character is borrowed, constructed piecemeal from offhand remarks, overheard conversations and—from those seeking to ingratiate themselves with her—hagiographies. The impression she has is crude but it is of a man who was darkly charismatic and often unhinged. She has heard stories of violent outbursts, of petty revenge. She remembers sitting in the back seat of a car when she was very young, pretending to listen to her portable cassette player while eavesdropping on the adults’ conversation. Roster was in the front speaking with another man she didn’t recognize. They mentioned a room behind her father’s Soho office full of waxwork statues, like those found at Madame Tussauds on Marylebone Road. They said that when her father didn’t like somebody, or when they did something that angered him, he showed them the waxworks. Agatha hadn’t fully understood the story, the significance of the statues or why her father’s adversaries would be so frightened by them, and as the years passed the details she remembered became detached from those she had actually heard. But the image stayed with her. When she was older, she looked for the room but didn’t find anything, and when she asked Roster he claimed not to know what she was talking about.
The trouble for Chelsea, Angel and Victoria was that they needed to navigate legal channels to wrestle from their sister a fortune that was earned illegally. After failing to overturn the will, their approach has been incendiary rather than incisive. Now, their aim seems not to be to take control of the business but to destroy it, along with Agatha. They believe that the threat of this will force her to offer them some kind of cash settlement.
“In reality, it amounts to little more than blackmail,” says Elton. “They have evidence your father’s wealth was gained by illegal means.”
“It was gained by illegal means,” Agatha replies. “Everyone knows that.”
“Yes and no. His cash riches came from, well, who knows where? That was never any of my business. But his property was purchased in plain sight of the law, albeit with that same cash. The property is, now, far and away the most valuable asset. He had the foresight to buy exactly when and where he did. But your sisters say they have evidence connecting him directly to the Soho sex trade, to pimping and indeed to trafficking, evidence that suggests he was more than just an oblivious landlord to the brothels, but rather involved in soliciting and in taking a direct cut from the earnings of the prostitutes, which was and is illegal. And moreover, they claim that this involvement is in fact continuing. They say they have evidence that could connect the Trust to pimping and by association evidence that could connect you to these activities.”
“I have never had anything to do with any of that,” says Agatha.
“I know, but there are aspects of some of the long-term rental agreements you have with these establishments that could connect your income more directly to the activities of your tenants than you might like.”
She perches at the front of the deep armchair. It’s designed for a man’s hips, back and shoulders, and has been sat in and settled by such men. She looks about at the room, at the paintings she just a moment before so easily dismissed, at the other leather armchairs in the large empty room which have, like hers, been worn down by and made to fit a shape that isn’t hers. The men of this room have traded in skin for hundreds of years. They built their fortunes on the sweat of others, but if she so much as touches the business of bodies, she might be ruined.
“Those bitches,” she spits. “They know they’ll never get the settlement they want in court but they would rather everyt
hing he built was seized by the government than allow me to have it in peace.”
“Quite. The thing is, they already seem to have copies of certain documents.”
“What documents? Have you seen them?”
“No, but our first step might be to arrange a meeting. To see what they actually have.”
“Good. You can see to that.”
“Yes. But they have stipulated that any meeting to negotiate must involve you directly. They want to sit down with you face to face.”
“I would rather not,” says Agatha.
“I realize you have managed to avoid them thus far, but a face-to-face meeting is coming.”
Tobias takes a sip of his tea. It’s clear he has more to say, but Agatha steps in: “We need to accelerate the evictions. We’ve been too tolerant. They’ve had their fun with these little protests. They have a big one planned this afternoon, I am told. But now they need to leave. The whole thing is frankly embarrassing. For them particularly, but also for us.”
“You’ve been establishing useful connections with the Met?”
“Just this morning,” says Agatha. “He seemed receptive. He’s running for mayor, you know, the rumors are true. All hush hush, until he resigns his job in the police force, of course, but clearly he is already interested in the prospect of my support, and will act accordingly while he is still wearing the badge.”
“Good,” says Mr. Elton. “That ought to put some fear into these girls. If the Met gets involved they won’t want to take the whole thing much further.”
“Perhaps,” says Agatha again. She sits back in her chair, feeling utterly depressed. The protests have been getting more attention, not less, and they have been spreading like inflammation in a sick body. London feels angry, and ill-prepared for large-scale unrest. There is so much hubris here.
They know about revolutions in Paris. There, rioters prised cobbles from the street and threw them. They dragged carts into the lanes to block them. When Napoleon III rebuilt the city, he made sure the streets were wider than the length of a cart, and paved with something heavier than cobble. Then in 1968, disaffected students overturned double decker buses and used those to block the streets instead.
The grander parts of London are wide and bright and difficult for dissidents to take by force. In Soho, the streets are narrow, and the lanes are dark. And it has always been a place of sedition.
Agatha has made preparations for a worst-case scenario. As well as her Mayfair townhouse, she has a manor house in the north of England, and with it land and tenanted cottages. The property was bought by her father at some point in the later stages of his life. If she reads the warning signs correctly, there should be time to collect her things and get out of the city before it becomes dangerous. If the action is restricted to the capital, that is. If unrest is more widespread, she will need to leave the country altogether.
She keeps a yacht, named Versailles, moored on the Thames, fully provisioned, manned by a permanent crew. It is expensive but worth it. Her mother is forever asking her if she can take the yacht on little jaunts to the Med, but notwithstanding the trips they go on together in the summer, Agatha invariably says no. When she is in London, the yacht will always be moored on the Thames.
The advantage of a yacht over, say, an airplane, is that it is easier to access. Airports and airfields would potentially be flooded with people, and there would be security checks and delays. In a boat, she could just sail down to the Medway and out into the Channel and then she’d be away.
Nobody else knows about these contingency plans. Just her and Roster. If she told anyone they would think she was deranged, like all those people who live in bunkers in New Mexico pickling cucumbers and canning roadkill in preparation for apocalypse.
Elton has already moved on to other topics. He is telling her about his son. Agatha’s mind is elsewhere, but the son comes in and she meets him. He is better looking than she expected—his looks must have come from his mother, as they can’t have come from his dad. Then she remembers Elton used to have an unexpectedly bohemian wife who left him in sordid circumstances, and she smiles to herself at the thought of this.
Soon afterwards, Agatha calls Roster and leaves the club to find him outside, standing next to the car. Fedor gazes from the back seat. Agatha takes her place beside him and places a hand on his silken ribcage. Roster climbs into the driver’s seat and turns the key in the ignition. The car rolls into gear and the old man steers it slowly through the Georgian streets, lined with fallen autumn leaves.
“What did the fancy man have to say to you today?” Roster asks.
Agatha tells him.
“He has his own methods, but you know I have mine. If you should ever need them, I wouldn’t hesitate.”
“Your methods are exactly what we’re trying to leave behind. You might have served my father in that way but that cannot be how you serve me. The business has moved on. The world has moved on.”
Roster turns the car down a back street to park it by a small café run by an Italian family that has been there for decades. It’s his sort of place rather than hers: a relic of a bygone era. It serves greasy fry-ups to hungry builders and steak and kidney pies with gravy, mushy peas and chips. Plastic chairs are attached to plastic tables, each with a complement of salt, pepper, vinegar, tomato ketchup and brown sauce. It’s not the sort of place that Agatha visits regularly, but she has a soft spot for it, and comes with Roster every now and then, as she has been doing since she was a little girl and spent time in London with him and her mother.
Roster puts on the handbrake and turns off the engine. He speaks from the front seat without turning his head.
“The business might be taking a new direction, but the world is much the same as it ever was.”
Worms and Thunder
Precious holds a carnival mask she bought in Venice. It is embossed with rhinestones and framed with feathers which are black beneath clouds but iridescent beneath sunshine, like an oil slick. The vendor overstated its quality. In the golden light of a Venetian spring, the glimmer appeared authentic. In the copper light of a London autumn, it looks tacky.
She puts it to her face and tucks the elastic strap at the nape of her neck, then spots herself in the mirror. The mask covers her forehead and the area around her eyes, but her mouth and chin are exposed. If someone saw her they might be able to recognize her just from this. It would depend how well they knew her. Close friends, perhaps. Her sons.
She is holding a placard by her side. There is a wooden post in her hand, and the attached sign rests on the floor. Some of the other girls made their own with cut-up cardboard boxes stuck to the ends of broom handles, and slogans scrawled with permanent markers. Precious wanted something more durable, so commissioned a sign from a printers.
“You want it to say what?” the saleswoman asked, aghast.
“You heard,” Precious replied, in no mood to pander. She contemplated a number of slogans, before settling on this one. Others went for jokey signs but Precious didn’t.
“It’s a serious issue,” she told Crystal when she saw hers. “People will be lined up to dismiss us because of who we are. We don’t want to give them even more reason to think we’re thick.”
“Do you think a thicko could come up with this? I don’t think so. The whole point is to attract people’s attention. You’re not going entice anyone with say no to eviction of soho prostitutes. It’s dry.”
“It sums up our aims, unlike occupy my vagina.”
Precious is in her front room, while Tabitha is still in the bedroom getting ready. If she peers out the window she can see the street below. A crowd has begun to gather. She spots some of the girls from her building, and friends from Brewer Street. There are even some women from Chinatown. She registers both Scarlets, Young and Old, standing together, looking cold and bored. Precious didn’t expect mother or daughter to be punctual, but here they are. She sees more signs. The one Giselle is holding reads no to banking | yes to bonk
ing. Precious shuts her eyes and breathes deeply, then opens them again and turns back into the room.
The event isn’t due to begin for another half hour, but it is good people are arriving early. Some have come from the women’s groups they’ve been in touch with, wearing second-hand clothes, scruffy shoes, angular haircuts and oversized glasses.
Tabitha emerges from the bedroom. She is wearing black jeans, a black fleece, comfortable leather pumps and a Darth Vader helmet.
“It’s all I could find,” she explains apologetically. The helmet has a built-in voice modulator to make her sound like a Sith lord. She looks and sounds completely ridiculous.
“Right,” says Precious, taking a deep breath. “Let’s go.”
They pick up handbags and placards and make their way downstairs to the street. The crowd has swollen, absorbing newcomers. They spot Candy, Young Scarlet, Old Scarlet, Hazel and Crystal and push through groups of people to get to them. Candy and Hazel have placards too. Hazel’s carries a statement about her body and her choices, written in pink and blue felt tip pen. Candy’s sign is facing away from Precious. She swivels the pole, and Precious sees her own masked reflection in a shiny piece of silver cardboard.
“What’s that?” Precious asks.
“A mirror to society,” Candy replies, as if this were obvious.
Precious just nods. Go with the flow, Precious, she says to herself, wondering not for the first time why she is putting so much effort into maintaining a living situation that keeps her in everyday proximity with these people.
The crowd sways like the crew of a tall ship, and heaves out some half-hearted chants. They haven’t warmed up yet. Precious spots Cynthia loitering on the opposite pavement and beckons for her to join them. Young Scarlet lets out a performative sigh and rolls her eyes ostentatiously. Young Scarlet and Cynthia hate each other.